


Life and Other Things Bright and New

by Amemait



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: GFY, Gen, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-10
Updated: 2013-07-10
Packaged: 2017-12-18 07:20:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/877135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amemait/pseuds/Amemait
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My name is Wilf, and I have seen so much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life and Other Things Bright and New

**Author's Note:**

> Rating: Uhhh... PG? -is guessing-  
> Disclaimer: I hold no ownership of any part of Doctor Who, in any way, shape, or form. This is just for the sheer fun of it.  
> Spoiler warnings: End of Time  
> Characters: Wilf, mentions Donna, Sylvia, Doctor. Eventually I'll write the rest of this, which is an Agatha Christie-style series in which Donna dashes about being rich and solving murders and generally being awesome, while inexplicably managing to ignore the aliens all around her. That series explains why her husband suggests 'River' as a name for the baby. #OhYouThinkI'mJoking #IHaveAnEntireOutlineForThatSeries  
> Notes: Not really.  
> Story warnings: None

My name is Wilfred Mott. No, not ‘not’. Mott. Two ts and a m.

I’ve seen one man – alien, maybe, but still just a man - I’ve seen him save the world, maybe the whole universe, maybe everything that ever was and ever could be and always is. I saw him give my granddaughter a whole new life, and then I had to watch as he took that life away. I’ve seen him in the streets and then he saved her Majesty, I’ve seen him in the skies in a flying blue box (my Donna waving her arm off inside), and I’ve seen him out the corner of my eye as my Donna stood in her wedding dress – her first wedding dress – on Christmas day. She was inviting him in for tea.

I’ve seen that one man do all that, and I’ve seen him walk away.

I’ve seen him throw a tantrum, and he nine-hundred and six, throwing a tantrum to make a three-year-old proud. Screaming and throwing papers and heedless of the broken glass around him.

I didn’t begrudge him that much. I would have died for him that day; he saved everything, he did deserve to live.

But his reward was to save me. To take my place, to die where I should have.

I’m an old man, you see. Not as old as he is, no, but he looks younger than my Donna, younger than my Sylvia. He looks like a man with so much ahead of him.

And he was willing to die to save me.

He didn’t though. He walked out of that little lockdown alive, and then he did the strangest things.

He ran his hands over his face, and a wealth of cuts and bruises disappeared. Red blood he’s got, like human blood, except he’s not human. His skin looked yellow, or maybe that was just the light. But yellow like the way my Donna’s skin goes sometimes around the edges when she’s hurt these days. She fell over and scraped her arm a few months ago, and the skin went a little yellow. We told her it was just the iodine.

He looked at me, and told me it was started.

He meant his death.

But there he was in front of me. Alive, and safe, and himself, and with all his cuts healed. Telling me he was going to die.

I wanted to tell him that everybody dies. My wife died, my Sylvia’s husband died, all my regiment’s long dead now. Potplants and humans and pets and unjust causes. They all die, even aliens who’ve saved everything there is to save..

But he just looked so lost, so I wrapped him in a hug, like I’d held my Sylvia in another hug. When she’d cried and sobbed and hit my arm and my chest and anything she could reach and yelled that it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that her Geoffrey should be taken from her like that. I held her then, like I held him then, but he didn’t move a muscle.

And then he cried.

Crying is good, I know that. It’s relieving, it’s helpful, it’s part of the grieving process.

But he just wept silently, tears rolling down his cheeks like he wasn’t even aware they were there.

He promised he’d see me again. One last time. And we did meet again. Her wedding, with a gift for all three of us.

A ticket for Donna. A memory for my Sylvia.

And for me?

A promise kept.

For my birthday, Donna got me another book. A Journal of Impossible Things, by Verity Newman. She frowned when she gave it to me, and then I looked at it.

I never let her borrow it. Told her it wasn’t that good, then I told her I lost it.

I keep it under my bed, still do, even since I gave her away at her wedding and she moved out with her new husband. Just in case she drops in unexpectedly. I’ve read it so many times, I could just about recite it.

I don’t know when he had that time. I don’t know if it was even really him. But Donna bought it for me, and told me that she wanted me to have it with that faraway look in her eyes, so I suppose it must have been him, and it must be from before she knew him.

‘Galeyphrei’, is the place he says he’s from in it. I know I’ve heard that place before. So it must be him.

He says he can’t give her back her mind and her memories, so he tries to give her money. Money can’t buy love, and it can’t buy happiness, and it certainly can’t buy back everything she’s lost. But maybe it can buy her a life of luxury, and it can certainly let her mind rest at ease.

She doesn’t get that faraway lost look so often now. Sometimes though, sometimes she’s the old Donna again. The one who looked up at the stars with me (I’ve packed up the telescope because it was too much of a risk). But when she is that Donna, her eyes aren’t distant. They’re right there, and she’s smiling.

I’m eighty-three now. It hurts to get up in the morning, it hurts more to see her not understand. But she’s looked after me and her mother, and this morning she turned to look at me, a smile playing about her eyes, a smile that I’ve seen him use.

I think she might not die. The same way that he doesn’t die. Oh, he called it a death, and he meant it too, but he told me what happens, and I know he wears a different face, a different voice, and a little bit of a different personality.

But his mind is still there.

I don’t think she’ll die, the same way that he doesn’t die. I hope she doesn’t live the same way that he lives, because I never want to see my little granddaughter make those kinda of choices, the kind of choices that he makes every day. The kind of choices I’ve seen him make, the kind of choices I’ve made him make, and the kind of choices I’ve read about him deciding, the kind of choices that I’ve listened to stories about.

She was too old to have a child, they said. But one came anyway, a healthy young girl with brown hair and eyes that pull you into another world. River, her husband suggested, and she nodded, tears rolling down her cheeks like she wasn’t even aware they were there.

Her mind is her own, her life is her own, and she is almost the way she was before.

He thinks a Time Lord lives too long. I think that’s not true.

I think a Time Lord – that Time Lord – may have a long life, but doesn’t live enough. Doesn’t stop, doesn’t pause, doesn’t let time pass around him, instead of him passing through time. He misses so much, because he’s not there to see it. Donna came back after that first time, and kept going on about ‘the big picture’. But life’s not about the big picture, it’s about all the little things, the tiny details. The minutiae of living is the most important of all, it’s what makes it a life.

I wish I could see him again, to help him understand that.

I wonder if I ever will?


End file.
